Adam Arenson is a historian of nineteenth-century North America, investigating the cultural and political history of slavery, Civil War, and Reconstruction and tracing the development of American cities. His work focuses on the American West and its borderlands – from California to the Yukon Territory, from St. Louis to El Paso – and places the experience of European settlement in the region into comparative perspective. Arenson's work on American cities reconstructs how residents made sense of their surroundings by supplementing the written record with material-culture findings and geographic information system (GIS) analysis. See further information on current research projects and classes taught at http://faculty.utep.edu/aiarenson
Articles
This is Not How My Book Starts: Looking Back at Writing and Framing, Rethinking History (2013)
Adam Arenson shares his first enthusiastic draft opening and his plan to shape a history...
Experience Rather than Imagination: Researching the Return Migration of African North Americans during the American Civil War and Reconstruction, Journal of American Ethnic History (2013)
Announcing the contours of research on the return migration of people of African descent from...
The Double Life of St. Louis: Narratives of Origins and Maturity in Wade’s Urban Frontier, Indiana Magazine of History (2009)
A half-century after Richard C. Wade's landmark history The Urban Frontier: The Rise of Western...
Freeing Dred Scott: St. Louis Confronts an Icon of Slavery, 1857-2007, Common-place (2008)
On March 6, 1857, in the infamous Dred Scott v. Sandford decision, the...
A Cultural Barometer: The St. Louis Mercantile Library as National Institution, 1846-1871, Missouri Historical Review (2008)
The St. Louis Mercantile Library, from its founding in 1846 to its 25th anniversary in...
Books
Frontier Cities: Recovering Encounters at the North American Crossroads of Empire (with Barbara Berglund and Jay Gitlin) (2012)
The twelve essays in this edited volume argue for the intersections of colonial and frontier...
The Great Heart of the Republic: St. Louis and the Cultural Civil War (2011)
The Civil War revealed what united as well as what divided Americans in the nineteenth...
Contributions to Books
Dred Scott vs. the Dred Scott Case: History and Memory of a Signal Moment in American Slavery, 1857-2007, The Dred Scott Case: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Race and Law (2010)
The Dred Scott Case centered on the Scott family—Dred and Harriet, and their daughters Eliza...
Libraries in Public before the Age of Public Libraries: Interpreting the Furnishings and Design of Athenaeums and Other ‘Social Libraries,’ 1800-1860, The Library as Place: History, Community and Culture (2007)
Before public libraries became common in the United States, both elite and striving men sought...
Newspaper and Magazine Articles and Blogs
Millard Sheets Mosaic Back in Beverly Hills, KCET Departures - Writing on the Wall blog by Ed Fuentes (2013)
A guest post about the re-installation of the Sheets Studio mosaic, formerly along the Camino...
New York Times Disunion series, New York Times (2013)
A link to my contributions to the New York Times' Disunion blog.
The Future of Newspapers? Watch the Nineteenth Century, History News Network (2012)
Rather than bemoaning how print journalism has fallen off from the twentieth century, we should...
Stonewall Jackson’s Arm Lies Here: What a memorial for an amputated limb can teach our society about wounded veterans, The Atlantic (2012)
What a memorial for an amputated limb can teach our society about wounded veterans.
How Research Blogging Improves Urban History, Urban History Association newsletter (2011)
This article explains why researchers should maintain a research blog for a project in development,...
Recorded Presentations and Interviews
Interview - Millard Sheets Studio exhibit, Creative Orange County by GYST Radio (2012)
A 30-minute interview about the Millard Sheets Studio museum exhibit by Wendy Sherman and Concepcion...
Civil War Talk Radio interview, Civil War Talk Radio, Gerry Prokopowicz (2012)
Interview on the Civil War Talk Radio show. Gerry Prokopowicz said "Now that the [Civil...
Civil War Book Review interview, Civil War Book Review, Louisiana State University Libraries Special Collections (2012)
A feature interview in Civil War Book Review. Audio and transcript available.
Facing Out from the Academy: How to Expand Your Writing & Engage a Broader Public, Meggin McIntosh, Emphasis on Excellence (2011)
This teleseminar discusses how (and why) to communicate your work beyond the university, including the...
Book Reviews
Review of Missouri’s War: The Civil War in Documents, ed. Silvana R. Siddali. Missouri Historical Review 105.2 (January 2011), 117-118. (2011)
A review of Missouri’s War: The Civil War in Documents, ed. Silvana R. Siddali, a...
Review of Empire’s Edge: American Society in Nome, Alaska 1898-1934 by Preston Jones Pacific Historical Review 77.2 (May 2008), 330-332. (2008)
A review of Empire’s Edge: American Society in Nome, Alaska 1898-1934, an extremely valuable portrait...